


For All That Tomorrow Might Bring

by Damalia (Achrya)



Series: Blackbirds and Firestarters [4]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Marvel Avengers Fusion, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Soul Bond, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 18:37:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6020716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Achrya/pseuds/Damalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>“Marco would want me to forgive you.” He didn’t look like he wanted to forgive. He looked like he wanted to empty the clip of Annie’s gun into Bertholdt’s head, wait for him to heal, and then do it again. He looked like he wants to scream, to cry, to sit down and never get back up. </em> </p><p>Bertholdt sold his soul hoping to protect his people but, in the end, all he's done is leave a trail of bodies. Losing his heart seems almost fair. </p><p> <br/>(Avengers AU. Shifters= Super Soldiers. Jean is Cap, Bert is Wanda, Annie is Black Widow. )</p>
            </blockquote>





	For All That Tomorrow Might Bring

**Author's Note:**

> ...happy belated Valentine's day?  
>  I do enjoy superhero AUs and random soul bounds/mating bonds it seems.

He drove his fist through another of the Titan drones neck, only dimly aware of the hiss and sting of steam licking over his bare skin as his hand closed around the spinal column and squeezed. The drone jerked then slumped forward, life in its eyes flicking off as if a lightswitch had been flipped to ‘off’.

He pushed the drone away, letting the lifeless body fall to the ground in a sizzling heap, and threw himself at the incoming wave of drones. It felt like they were endless, running at him with their mindless puppet smiles and glassy eyes, hungry for the taste of human flesh. He’d cut down what felt like hundreds and was caked in blistering hot blood and gore, but he was starting to think he was fighting a losing battle.

Then again winning wasn’t the goal. He was just trying to buy time to evacuate civilians and keep the drones and whoever was pulling their strings from getting into the reactor's control room. The city was doomed, the reactor core already damaged and leaking and the charges that had been set counting down with no way to stop them, the city was a floating warhead and they were fucked, but it was his job to keep the end from coming early.

He was tired and injured, his ability to heal not quite keeping up with the damage he was taking, but this was his doing. He and Reiner...they’d been so stupid thinking they could save their people, their homeland, at the expense of everyone else and now they were paying the price.

If they survived this they’d spend their entire lives paying for it.

He dug his hands into the neck of another drone and pulled it’s spine out even as teeth clamped down on his shoulder. He didn’t make a sound even as pain laced up his side and the crunch of bone being splintered echoed in his ears. He twisted around then slammed back into a wall, crushing the drone. He could hear the stone shatter under the force as dust and bits of shaken loose concrete rained down. The teeth in his arm loosened and when he staggered forward the drone slid down into a heap.

It was tempting to just walk away from the drone; it was unmoving, it’s head was lolling strangely to the side, and it’s upper body was listing forward as if barely connected to the lower half. Bertholdt’s arm was hanging from his side and not responding to his command to move and blood was flowing freely, mixing with the drone remnants clinging to him. But walking away without being sure the spine was destroyed meant it would get back up and bite his neck out.

He shared the same weakness as the drones; he’d get up from just about anything so long as his spine wasn’t severed or crushed beyond regeneration. He’d been burned, shot, stabbed, cut open in the name of science, lost a limb or two but he always healed. It hurt every time and made him acutely aware of what he’d become in order to protect his people, in the pursuit of The Mission, but it had it’s uses.

He pulled his blade from where it was strapped to his thigh and drove it into the drone’s neck; there was some resistance but he pushed through it unflinchingly.

He’d felt bad about killing drones at first. The only real difference between what he was and what they were was that he’d retained his mind; it was a big difference, yes, but when he was wearing their blood it felt like a very thin line.

He could have been like them. Reiner could be like them.

He jerked the blade free, flicking his wrist to clear off the worst of the blood, mind already on what he could do to keep the drones back while his arm fixed itself (he could already feel the nerves and tissue and bone knitting back together and white hot pain prickling into his fingertips.) when he felt it.

Pain like nothing he’d never known before and Bertholdt knew pain. It was almost as familiar as Reiner’s body was under his hands (not his own body because he didn’t know what or who he was anymore), as familiar as Annie’s voice.

He’d been torn apart and put back together with his eyes wide open, held down and beaten and used and taunted until he’d exploded then been forced to repeat the process again and again, made to listen to the cries of the people he cared about most while he lied in filth and breathed in metallic air, hoping they would just die so he didn’t have to hear it anymore.

But this...this was worse.

This was having his heart ripped out, having acid poured down his his throat, blades worked under his skin, and more. So much more.

He fell, screaming and clutching at his chest. His skin boiled and the air hissed around him.  

Lightning flashed in the distance, close to where the others were evacuating the civilians, and Bertholdt knew. He didn’t need to see it, didn’t need to be there, because there was the pain, the stifling silence in his head where Reiner had been, the bone deep hollow feeling that he somehow knew came with a broken soul bond.

The world blurred, turned red, and there was only the feeling of flying apart.

A scream, a roar of an explosion, heat and wind and he was too big for his body, too big to be real, his heart pounded in his ears  _ Reiner Reiner Reiner _ , and everything was crumbling beneath him and

He came back to himself and he was upright, somehow moving his feet or maybe he was being dragged along because it doesn’t seem like he was actually supporting his own weight. He tilted his head down down down to see blond hair; she shifted and he was looking into hard blue eyes.

She looked so small and delicate like that, carved from crystal but somehow keeping him up, forcing him to move through the ruins of the city on ground that he could feel trembling beneath them. Her hair was loose, singed in a few places, and her uniform was sporting some bloody holes but she was still beautiful.

He knew he looked awful; clothes probably destroyed, skin burned away and growing back in whatever manner it felt like, suspected his hair was gone again.

“Reiner’s dead.” He croaked.

She didn’t blink. Didn’t cry, didn’t so much as flinch but then Annie was like diamond, cold and unfeeling, and he hated her so much. He wanted to yell, to remind her that she had left them, betrayed them, thrown away everything they had believed and worked for and for what?

For more of the same? Killing and hurting and watching everyone die around her?

He remembered how he’d thought he was in love with her, before they’d all been changed, before she’d left and he’d realized that Reiner was the one who’d stand at his back until they couldn’t stand anymore.

He remembered wanting her to come back so badly, being afraid for her, hating that their group of four was now two, and wondering every day where she was.

He wondered if she felt the same way.

Did she even feel anything anymore?

Her eyes caught his, hard as ice, and he decided she felt just as much as he did.

The ground shook and tilted like someone was pushing the city onto it’s side then settled again.

“We’re all about to die. You annihilated the core With that explosion but the city is going down, two minutes until we drop.” She put one foot in front of the other and her arm tightened around him. “All the ships are gone. Civilians are gone. Armin’s trying to turn the city to rubble, there’s no way off but, upside, the view is amazing. It’s just us and-” Her eyes flickered to the side. “Cap.”

He looked too. The other man didn’t look much like a hero, like the Captain, as he stumbled over the rubble towards them. Uniform dirty and torn, shield nowhere to be seen, expression so tired that Bertholdt could feel it in his veins. He looked like he was done, defeated. He looked like he had that day on the wall when he’d realized he was alone, that he’d lost something that couldn’t be replaced.

“You here to kill me?” He muttered; he felt Annie go stiff next to him and wondered what she would do, who she would side with. He hoped she wouldn’t try to protect him. He was too tired to fight, too tired to care about living or dying.

The ground shook again.  

Jean looked at him, pale brown eyes hooded and unreadable, then shook his head.

“Aren’t you tired of people dying yet?”

He closed his eyes. “We killed him you know. Just let him fall off the wall.”

Jean was quiet for so long that Bertholdt opened up his eyes half expecting him to have walked away. But no there he was, face twisted up in a kind of pain Bertholdt hadn’t understood before, not back then when he’d stood on the wall with Reiner and watched Sergeant Marco Bodt fall and be swarmed by titan drones, seen blood splatter the snow as one of his arms was torn loose before the pack on him had become too thick to see through.

“You’ve killed a lot of people.” Jean said finally, voice so soft he could barely hear it. “Reiner too now.”

That was true enough. Not always with his own hands, no, but he’d done things, carved out the path that had killed so many and now Reiner too. He was drowning in the blood of people he’d never met, whose names he would never know.  

Jean stepped forward and hauled Bertholdt up more, shouldering his weight, mouth a grim line. He stood like a solider, back ramrod straight and shoulders stiff but Bertholdt saw the bloodshot eyes and messy hair, the dirt and blood on his skin, the smoking wounds knitting themselves back together.

“Marco would want me to forgive you.” He didn’t look like he wanted to forgive. He looked like he wanted to empty the clip of Annie’s gun into Bertholdt’s head, wait for him to heal, and then do it again. He looked like he wants to scream, to cry, to sit down and never get back up.

He remembered being in the cell next to Marco all those years ago, before he'd finally gotten tired of fighting and become the warrior he'd been built to be. He dreamed about those cells sometimes, dreamed about the man who'd refused to fall apart with the rest of them. Could still hear the biting sarcasm for the guards, the sound of cracking bones and muffled sobs that came when the changes started, and quiet soothing words for everyone else in spite of how much pain Marco must have been in. Promises that someone, someone too stupid and too stubborn to give up, would be saving them. He remembered a cool hand somehow fitting through the bars of his cell and pressing against his forehead when he’d been so sick he couldn’t open his eyes anymore.

He remembered watching him fall and thinking that there was no turning back.

He couldn’t do anything but clench his hand into fabric of Jean’s uniform because Jean’s words bit so deep he’s sure he’d vomit if he spoke.

Annie stayed on his other side, arm still tight around him. "Let's go see the view."

\---

Bertholdt jerked awake, shivering even though he wasn't cold. The dream was still there, pushing in on him. The feeling of Reiner's lips lingered on his own and made his stomach twist. 

He pushed himself up, realizing with a frown that he’d fallen asleep in the common room, curled up on a couch in Arle-Armin’s high tech upstate facility. Someone had draped a blanket over him: Armin or Sasha probably. Annie would have picked up the couch and dumped him off sooner than make him comfortable. She found his depression and self-loathing tedious, or so she’d told him time and again, and was ready to get back to work.

They hadn’t died. Agent Smith had taken it upon himself to risk dying to bring one last airship back to the crumbling city and pick up the three of them. It hadn’t been a smooth rescue. They hadn’t been able to get clear of the explosion, rocks and debris had all but destroyed the ship. Armin had been there in his armor and Levi had lent what he called magic (The idea of magic made Bertholdt itchy) to the cause but they’d still hit the ground hard.

Armin’s suit had been a twisted wreck but Eren had managed to pry him loose and everyone seemed confident he’d be out of the wheelchair sooner rather than later, and in the meantime would continue to add rockets to said chair.

Agent Smith lost an arm. It was a novel concept in a way, losing a limb and not having it grow back.

He, Annie, and Jean had been in bad states, having not even had time to strap in, but their spines had been intact so they’d healed.

No one (aside from titan drones) had died except for Reiner who had literally, in a fit of human sentiment Bertholdt couldn’t help but think was a result of his at times tenuous hold on sanity, thrown himself into a wave of drones trying to stop the evacuation. Even with skin like armor and lightning crashing from the sky at his call he hadn’t had much of a chance with so many on him at once.

Sasha seemed to think it was very heroic. Bertholdt couldn’t clean the bitter taste from his mouth or think around the silence in his brain where Reiner used to be to form much of an opinion about it.  

Bertholdt wasn’t going to be executed but was on a kind of house/duty arrest for the rest of his life. He wasn’t entirely sure he cared one way or the other about it.

“You’re awake.”

He twisted around to see Jean standing in the doorway with a small pile of brown folders held against his chest. Bertholdt nodded; they hadn’t spoken much and he figured that was pretty fair. He’d thought, on occasion, about asking if the hollow feeling got better, if moving on like Annie told him to would ever be possible, but he didn’t really think he had the right.

Losing Reiner was his punishment for the things he’d done. To live, alone and always hurting, was what he deserved. Death would have been too easy.

“You know we never found Marco’s body?” Jean’s voice cracked like glass on the name and something wet and mournful leaked out over what he said next. “Probably didn't even survive the fall and I knew that but I looked anyway. For days, wishing that...he wasn't so human. Gave up eventually, figured the drones ate him."

Human. 

Right.

He pulled his legs up to his chest and set his chin on his knees, biting his tongue as hard as he could before speaking. “They do that.”

He didn’t know why they did it. He, personally, had never felt the urge to go around eating people (Though he’d heard some stories about Eren that made him more sure than ever that if Jean was the pinnacle of the Titan Hybrid experiment then Eren was rock bottom.) but the drones did just that. Greedy mindless things, like zombies in a movie but with super strength and healing factors.

“Eren couldn’t find Reiner.”

He didn’t wince but he also didn’t breath for a moment. Looked down and realized his hands were slick with sweat; if he reached up it would probably be starting to bead on his forehead and dampen his hair.

“Probably ate him too. Or the explosion or-”

Jean made a dismissive noise as he stepped into the room. It was dark, the only light coming from the windows and the lowered blinds cast strange shadows on Jean when he passed in front of them. Made him look harder, thinner, eyes and cheeks sunken in.

“What do you know about the Winter Titan?”

He blinked. “The what?”

He knew about Annie, the Crystal Titan. Reiner had been the Armored Titan, he was the Colossal (He would have thought something about his tendency to shed his skin and literally explode would have been more apt but no one had asked him.) Ymir was the Dancing Titan. Marcel hadn’t lived long enough to get a name. Eren was the Rogue.

Jean. Jean was just The Captain.

Bertholdt knew about all of the successful Titan hybrid attempts and had put down a fair number of the uncontrollable failures himself, once he’d fallen in line, become a True Believer, (though never quite as dedicated to the cause as Reiner had been) and started moving up through the ranks. No names for them either, not even their real human names in the end. Subject numbers, little red X’s, and orders to break their necks.

There was no ‘Winter Titan’.

Jean offered the folder to him. He stared at it, afraid in a way he couldn’t put a name to, then looked back at Jean.

"It's not an 'official name', just something people call him. The Winter Titan has been around a few years, since we all went to ground the first time. Kind of a myth, really. Something goes wrong, someone dies who shouldn't, blame the Winter Titan. Wouldn't even be sure he was real except Annie had a run in a few years ago, didn't go well."

"Okay?"

"Darius Zackly was killed last night. He got a message out before it happened, described two men. One fit Annie's description of Winter. The other was big, blond, skin that bullets bounced off of, and, I quote, 'angry as fuck'.”

He felt cold. “It's not him.”

“Annie says no one has ever said anything about Winter having a partner before. Suspicious timing.”

The empty feeling in his chest and brain where there, always there, taunting him. “He’s gone.”

A shrug and then the folders were closer, practically thrust into his face. “This is everything I could find. It’s...next to nothing, actually. Annie and Armin called in favors, Director Pixis dug in deep and this was still all we could get.”  

“I can’t-” He was shaking now, trembling and sweating and suffocating but Jean was just staring at him, unforgiving and unsympathetic. Of course. Anyone else might have felt for him, would have been careful around someone who'd lost who he'd lost, but not Jean. Never Jean.

“You can and you will. Even if it's not him you're our leading hands on Hybrid expert now and that means you're on deck so deal with it.” It was an order and, in spite of himself, Bertholdt relaxed fractionally. Orders. He could work with orders. He was good with orders. He’d been following orders for a long time.

Thinking for himself just had him sleeping all day, not eating without throwing up, and not showering half as often as he should.

"Don't you want to know?" Jean rubbed at his eyes, shoulders slumping as if he was holding the weight of the world on them. "I would want to know."

He took the folders.

 

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone cares about where everyone fits: Sasha =Hawkeye  
> Armin = Iron Man  
> Eren = Hulk  
> Mikasa = her usual badass self thanks  
> Levi = Loki. But less dickish. ...and yet more dickish.  
> Erwin = Nick Fury  
> Marco= Bucky (I think that was obvious? Idk.)  
> Connie = Falcon


End file.
